AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Coffee mugs in hand, Johnny and Joanna sat down on an old plaid couch to chat. It all felt very awkward. Joanna’s leg looped over Johnny’s knee. Joanna kept glancing at Johnny for approval.
Joanna asked Rhiannon what she was up to. Rhiannon tried to answer her questions, but her life felt so far away. She was more interested in her mother, especially the blank space between when Joanna had left her old family and now. How much did this Johnny person know about that? Had he been with her all along? Was he an addict, too?
What was frustrating was that Joanna didn’t seem that interested in filling in the blanks. She only wanted to talk about their present day—the luxury vehicles Johnny sometimes brought home for them to drive for the weekend, loaners from the dealership. And she complained about her job at the Walgreens up the road. “Just customer service,” she said. “And I work the photo kiosks, too. You shouldseewhat some people want printed. It’s like, don’t they realize there are people on the other end, putting their shots of their private parts into envelopes?”
Rhiannon felt the sudden urge to call Carey. Maybe this womanwasthe woman who’d plunged her children off a bridge, and Rhiannon had been a victim of that, and she’d been fooling herself all these years, thinking it was a dream.
“So,” Joanna said, hopping up. “Would you like to see a picture?”
At first, Rhiannon thought her mother was going to show her a picture ofthem,Joanna and Rhiannon and Carey, when they were young. But then she walked to a dresser on the other side of the small room and pulled open a drawer, extracting a flimsy set of photos in an accordion and placing it, in a jumble, on Rhiannon’slap. It was the first sonogram Rhiannon had ever seen besides posts on Facebook.
“There’s the head,” Joanna explained, pointing to a blob among the blackness. “And in this one, there’s the feet. Oh, it’s a boy, by the way. Look, he’s giving us the finger.”
“So this was planned, then?” Rhiannon blurted. “This baby?”
Her mother’s palm flattened over the ultrasound photos. A look passed between her and Johnny. “A bit of a surprise.” Her voice had risen in pitch. “When is a child everplanned,really?”
Rhiannon’s gaze landed on the photos. All at once, she could see a baby’s hand through the black murk, clear as day. And Joanna was right. Kidwasgiving the finger.
After they went to sleep, Rhiannon searched the house. First the guest bedroom, then the kitchen, the den, the half bath, the full bath, the finished part of the basement (with, of course, a pool table), theunfinishedpart of the basement, and the garage—for bottles of any kind. Medications. Even chemicals you could huff. There were cartons of cigarettes, there was a huge stash of Diet Coke, but neither of them seemed addicted to anything stronger.
She supposed they might keep all of their supplies in their bedroom, but the next day, she learned that Johnny was in AA and rigorous about it. Had a sponsor, sometimes sponsored others. It made Rhiannon feel better. He also knew Joanna had once been an addict, too. “Muddling through it together,” he told her. “Every day’s a challenge, even still.”
Rhiannon was glad to see her mother was stable and with someone who was working on himself. But she kept waiting for some sort of moment between her and Joanna. A big conversation,maybe, a reason Joanna had summoned her, thehelpshe needed. Acknowledgment from Joanna that what she’d done to Rhiannon had been incredibly damaging would be nice, too.
Rhiannon was too stubborn to break the ice, though. She wanted Joanna to do the work, for once in her life.
But even after weeks passed, no revelation came. Johnny and Joanna favored a smoky dive bar on the side of the road that sometimes played loud music. Rhiannon accompanied them two times. She was dying for a stiff drink, but Johnny and her mother never drank anything harder than Dr Pepper, and she didn’t want to be a bad influence. Just standing in the dark, musty bar, she felt like she’d dropped into another life. She was using up all her work vacation time. For this.
“C’mon, girls,” Johnny said on the second night they went, once they picked up Joanna from her shift at Walgreens. She was still wearing her name tag. “Smush together. Smile.”
It was weird, having her picture taken with her mother. Rhiannon wondered if it might be the only memento for the rest of her life. It made her sad.
“Can you send it to me?” Rhiannon asked, and in a moment, it landed in her inbox. That night, she studied the photo, marveling at how similar she and Joanna looked as adults, feeling queasy, still, at her mother’s pregnant belly.
Another day passed. Rhiannon started to feel antsy. She needed to get back to her real life. Whatever she had come looking for, she wasn’t going to get it. Lenna had called multiple times, and Rhiannon needed to clear the air. Maybe she should even tell her the truth of why she was here.
Finally, an email landed in her inbox. Apparently,City Gossipwas going through a reorganizational period. Rhiannon’s position had been made redundant. He was very sorry.
Rhiannon was stunned. She called Rich, begging that hereconsider, but he said, in a somewhat clipped voice, that the decision had been made. She felt like she’d been slapped. She’d worked so hard there, and this was how they left things?
She expected, too, for Lenna to reach out after this news. Strange when she didn’t. Their argument floated back to her—all those accusations Lenna hurled her way.HadRhiannon stood in the way of Lenna writing?Hadit always been about Rhiannon?
Maybe Lenna was really and truly mad. And maybe she deserved to be. Rhiannon missed Lenna fiercely, suddenly. She’d been so shortsighted. All this time, she’d dreamed of joining a community, yearning for a family—but wasn’t Lenna both those things? Had the family she’d been looking for been right in front of her all along?
Over a month into her stay, she’d had enough. Nothing was going to be said here. Nothing was going to improve. “I need to go back home,” she told her mother and Johnny at dinner.
Joanna and Johnny exchanged a glance. “But we’re enjoying having you.”
Werethey? “I can’t stay any longer,” Rhiannon said. “I’m sure I’ve outstayed my welcome anyway. Thanks for having me.”
And then she got up to pack her things. A few minutes later, Joanna knocked on her door. Rhiannon was staying in the tiny guest room, on a pullout sofa bed; also stuffed in the room were a bunch of unopened Amazon boxes, milk crates full of DVDs, and other odds and ends. Anywhere she stepped, she feared knocking something over.
“Honey,” Joanna said, her eyes full of sorrow. “Can I be honest?”
Rhiannon paused in her packing. Here it was, maybe. The apology, at long last.
Joanna breathed out. “Johnny’s a little mad at me. I don’t want to set him off. Having you here…it’s been a nice buffer.”
